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I wasn't saying it's horrible, I was trying to explain why people choose to remain unemployed. Setting the right level for benefits is hard: Either the basic i
by nikanj 6y ago
I wasn't saying it's horrible, I was trying to explain why people choose to remain unemployed.
Setting the right level for benefits is hard: Either the basic income is high enough to provide for a good life (why would I get a job), or it's not high enough to pay for food, shelter, bills (why do we treat our unemployed people this badly).
Rising the wages across the board raises prices sooner or later. That probably moves the unemployment money from the former category to the latter via inflation, which does motivate people to get a job, but screws the people who can't get a job.
I have no solutions to offer. This is a gnarly problem, featured for example in the Grasshopper and the Ant, first recorded in Aesop's fables from ~600BC. Enjoying life is wonderful, but if everyone enjoys life, we'll all starve.
- aspaviento 6y ago> Enjoying life is wonderful, but if everyone enjoys life, we'll all starve. Maybe the solution is in the middle: make work time as little as possible so people who work can also enjoy life and pay them according to that time.
- harpiaharpyja 6y agoI have to agree, I suspect the culture of mandatory 8 hours a day 5 days a week leads to a massive amount of wasted work hours put in just to fill the time (when considered across everyone in society who works under such conditions). It's a net loss for society as a whole.
- mistrial9 6y agooh how wrong you are -- according to Jack Ma in China: Jack Ma endorses China’s controversial (996) 12 hours a day, 6 days a week work culture
- ku-man 6y agoThat poor devil. The communists took good care of him. He doesn't talk loud anymore.
- namelessoracle 6y agoIs it any suprise that a chinese elite would advocate a "work makes free" policy?
- taurath 6y agoBasic income would allow for people to focus on their own health and take work when they want to do something. Part of technological and societal progress is that we don’t use the threat of starvation for people to better for themselves. We have enough money to bring up the bottom economic class and still let the top have their private cruise ships.
- sokoloff 6y agoIf you doubled federal individual income taxes for everyone in the US, you could pay each adult US citizen around $750/mo in UBI with that increase. If you doubled ALL federal income taxes in the US, you could pay each adult US citizen ~$1500/mo in UBI. The math is daunting because the number of people is so high.
- jl2718 6y agoNo. Because nobody would work, and corporations would invest all revenues offshore. The country would be destroyed, and you’d get nothing. Income taxation is one of the most economically destructive and violent ways to generate revenues. Do you seriously think it’s a good idea to point guns at people doing the work and tell them to give you 80-100% of their pay because you think you deserve it for doing nothing? Only a violent sociopath would do that, right? Please tell me how your proposal is different.
- sokoloff 6y agoSorry if it wasn’t clear (and I can see how I left it slightly unclear). I don’t see any viable path to paying UBI at those relatively low levels because the tax burden on people and companies is too high. (And frankly, $750/mo isn’t enough to accomplish what the UBI advocates want to promise which is to make work literally optional.)
- jhauris 6y agoI'm not at all convinced of UBI, but does your math include removing all the tax that pays for benefits that would no longer be needed such as unemployment, social security, etc.? It seems removing those benefits would reduce the tax burden significantly.
- staticassertion 6y ago> Rising the wages across the board raises prices sooner or later. Does it actually have to though? If a company is still profitable it doesn't actually have to raise its prices just because its profits go down.
- nikanj 6y agoTypical margins in various unskilled labour jobs are under 10%, and labour is usually one of the big ticket items on the budget. If payroll goes up 30%, prices have to go up - or the business goes bankrupt. Next up, someone who saw Founder is going to point out that McDonalds makes money from rent, not selling food. Sure, that might be true for McDonalds-the-corporation, but the McDonalds-down-the-street franchise will have to come up with the payroll money somehow. Your average business is way less profitable than you think.
- duckfang 6y agoIf a company relies on wage slavery and the implicit American threat of 'no work: no housing, no food, no medical', then those companies should die. Edit: it's funny how I'm modded down, but this is straight up 'Socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor'. And it's doubly insulting that the unemployment "insurance" is being pulled en masse, with only regard to the monied elite. Then again, I'd expect no less coming from a den of VC's and their ilk. They certainly don't care about the human.
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoHN likes to think it is better than reddit, but boy oh boy you better not talk about vegetarianism or wealth taxes.
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- antihero 6y agoThere's also another factor which I think is important. If working was simple enough to be a bit dull but not horrendously unpleasant due to companies that wish to work people to the bone, patronise them, and forcing them to submit to nasty management, it might be a more attractive concept. If people are desperate for work, they are vulnerable to the absolutely disgusting way they are treated and exploited by employers. I find that in tech that employers treat me fantastically because I have more of a value proposition and am thus bargaining from a stronger perspective. If working is so bad that it's actively damaging to my mental and physical health, I would be doing everything I can to avoid it.
- 52-6F-62 6y agoThe unfortunate side is that the people voting on and installing policies that don’t help workers but tend to punish them have never seen that side of life—one where they’ve had to operate at the mercy of a cruel employer out of desperation and just plain survival. We can surely do better than that, but it takes empathy. For that reason, my hopes are tempered.
- gumby 6y ago> Enjoying life is wonderful, but if everyone enjoys life, we'll all starve. What a grim, zero-sum view. How about working and enjoying life?
- mbg721 6y agoI think it's more accurate to say "If everyone optimizes for immediate enjoyment all the time, we all starve."
- UncleMeat 6y agoAnd if everybody optimizes for capital markets all the time, people die without living.
- mbg721 6y agoFor sure! I would never advocate "maximize other people's money" as a philosophy around which anyone should center their life. The idea is to convince everyone to buy into an economy that works, and then live life around that.
- ABeeSea 6y agoPrices are a function of supply and demand, not the cost of labor.
- missedthecue 6y agoBut if the equilibrium is below the cost of production, no one will bother producing.